Van Duyn, Mona (Vol. 116) - Arthur Oberg (review date Winter 1973)
Arthur Oberg (review date Winter 1973)
SOURCE: "Deer, Doors, Dark," in Southern Review, Vol. 9, No. 1, Winter, 1973, pp. 243-56.
[In the following excerpt, Oberg responds favorably to To See, To Take.]
Unlike [Peter] Russell's book, [The Golden Chain,] Mona Van Duyn's To See, To Take takes notice of where modern poetry has been going as much as it succeeds in evolving a style that is unmistakably Miss Van Duyn's.
To See, To Take is full of things to admire—generosity and intelligence, wit and love. Beyond that, it is an outrageous book in ways that only major books, and major writers, can afford to be. Both Shakespeare and Yeats are prominent here, not so much as literary ghosts, but as sensibilities with whom Mona Van Duyn has much to share. The multiplicity of Shakespeare and that perfect control of tone which Yeats displayed in poems like "Leda and the Swan," "Among School Children," and "The Circus...
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